


Remnants Of Ben And The Things Rey Forgot

by EllieCarina



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Gen, Headcanon, Kylo-centered, Young Ben Solo, Young Rey, heavy heavy mentions of reylo, kenobi-rey, still a reylo fic, theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 19:49:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5552975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieCarina/pseuds/EllieCarina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Volcanic heat hit him in the face as the ripple between them grew bigger and bigger yet. Rey looked scared and Kylo had to hit his side again, all to keep what she still did to his emotions at bay. He half wanted to shout out a warning, to tell her to run before the ground dissolved entirely under her feet, but he stopped himself. Eventually, an eternity of holding his gaze later, she came to her senses and did run. And left him there. Lying in the snow, cold and confused. They would come for him, he knew. But he could not help the pathetic little pang of abandonment upon seeing her turn around on him, running to safety, escaping on the ship that had been his father’s.</p><p>He heard her scream in the back of his head as he watched the Millennium Falcon take wing. “No, come back,” she screeched but it was only an old memory.<br/>“Quiet, girl,” he had told her back then.</p><p>***</p><p>The truth about where Rey comes from. With real movie quotes. I'm using the Kenobi-theory here. Huge spoilers, of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there :) This was a beast to write but I wanted it out in the world, because it is not just a fic but also my theory of who Rey is. If you like, read and tell me your own.
> 
> I'm also always very very happy about kudos and comments, so if you feel so inclined, I'd be very happy to hear your thoughts.  
> I'd like to mention that I am not a native speaker and sometimes there will be weird words and spelling mistakes, as I don't have a beta either.
> 
> The usual Reylo-Disclaimer applies, if you no like-y, please move along. If you do like..I hope you enjoy the read.
> 
> The "Kylo hits himself in order to feel more pain and remain nice and dark"-theory is taken from this lovely post on tumblr:http://nspx.tumblr.com/post/135995952814/kylo-ren-is-legitimately-so-desperate-to-stay-on

* * *

# Remnants Of Ben And The Things Rey Forgot

The earth shook beneath them and he landed hard on his back, spine cracking uncomfortably. The wound at his side hurt as if he was burning alive but he welcomed the distraction it posed. The pain that throbbed through his body was at least a reliable anchor tethering him to the dark side. Whenever she was near him, it was harder to shut out the light and so he pounded down fiercely on the seeping skin again and again, making it sting all the more.

He was getting ready to find his footing again and looked up but when he did, he saw Rey floating away from him, out of reach. No, not quite floating. He only then became aware of the ground moving under him and the earth opening up in a tumultuous screech. Volcanic heat hit him in the face as the ripple between them grew bigger and bigger yet. Rey looked scared and Kylo had to hit his side again, all to keep what she still did to his emotions at bay. He half wanted to shout out a warning, to tell her to run before the ground dissolved entirely under her feet, but he stopped himself. Eventually, an eternity of holding his gaze later, she came to her senses and did run. And left him there. Lying in the snow, cold and confused. They would come for him, he knew. But he could not help the pathetic little pang of abandonment upon seeing her turn around on him, running to safety, escaping on the ship that had been his father’s.

He heard her scream in the back of his head as he watched the Millennium Falcon take wing. “No, come back,” she screeched but it was only an old memory.  
“Quiet, girl,” he had told her back then.

***

He had not thought about Jakku for a long time, his mind preoccupied with a multitude of other tasks, orders and game plans. He had not sat down and feel his way around the galaxy for signs of the Force in forever. Had not flown close by the sandy scrap planet to feel for her and, without fail, find her surviving, unrelenting glimmer of light endure in the desert’s heat. Yes, it had been years since he had last thought of the girl on Jakku.

However, when business and a certain resistance pilot took route toward the small planet, he could feel her from the second he entered the atmosphere. She was close, closer than he would have guessed from their location and she was still glowing, fainter now, but it was there. As he set foot onto the sand in the tiny nomad village, he was hoping to find both the resistance pilot and the missing piece to the map leading to old Jedi Master Luke Skywalker. And, silently and lingering, despite being repressed by years of self-discipline and menace, he wanted to see her. Just to check. Just to make sure. But he did not give in to this weakness. He had more pressing matters to attend to.

***

Ben was not sure when exactly master Luke had started to grow distracted. But he was pretty certain it started when he first found that wretched letter of old Ben Kenobi. His namesake and Luke’s old confidant. And Jedi Master of the grandfather Ben was not supposed to talk about. Anakin Skywalker. _Darth Vader_. The most powerful Jedi, the most powerful Sith Lord, that had ever lived.  
Master Luke always had fond stories to tell of Ben Kenobi, of Obi Wan as he called him. He styled him as the most virtuous of Jedi, the most sensible of them all. He had possessed great power and even greater discipline.

Whenever Ben started losing his hard-earned grip on his temper and his tasks and routines started to crumble under the weight of his raging, conflicting emotions, pulled and ripped at the Force inside him, Master Luke would remind him of good Obi Wan Kenobi and how he stuck to all of the rules and was a better Jedi for it, a better man - a sentient, higher being sort of floating above them all. Ben should aspire to be more like the man he was named after, was what Master Luke meant by this. No matter how hard it was, no matter how much always failing at attaining the unattainable killed him.

At first, upon finding out about one of the rules Obi Wan did break and dramatically so, Ben was livid. Finally, surely, Master Luke would remove the old man from his pedestal and grant the young Ben some reproach, to cut him some slack for not being perfect.  
After all, his namesake had, late in his life, neglected maybe the most important Jedi rule of not having a love or a family and had put a child in a nomad woman on Tatooine and let her raise his son by herself, too ashamed to acknowledge is misstep.  
But instead of going easier on Ben, Master Luke opted to neglect him even more, suddenly obsessed with finding Obi Wan’s offspring. He boarded a shuttle and set out to find the lost Kenobi, leaving Ben to train with an older Padawan who was routine-savvy but not half as gifted with the Force as he was.

He would send holograms from various places in the galaxy until finally, a very excited Master Luke sent the last hologram, already on board of the ship that would take him and Obi Wan’s son Dune and his family back to their training centre. He was raging about Ben Kenobi’s gifted granddaughter, about how high she was on the midichlorian scale, far surpassing her grandfather, more so rivalling his own number of 14,500.

This was the first insult to Ben. He knew where he stood on the scale and it was below Master Luke, not by much. But still. And now there would be a child, a little girl, who had more access to the force than him. He could feel Luke singing with excitement even from so far away. He had found a new prodigy. A new him to train, someone to take over the reins from him one day and Ben Solo fell into the backseat like he fell into everything. Headfirst and unprepared. Again. It seemed like nothing ever changed.

His father favoured the adventurous pilots in training, his mother favoured her soft-spoken political allies and now Master Luke favoured a nameless nomad girl and he was left discarded again. On the scrap pile until the end of his days - always second choice. The darkness in the back of his chest reared its head and it felt good to indulge the disappointment and the anger..just for a little while.

***

The underling spoke with barely contained terror in his voice as he told him how they lost the droid on a market in Jakku. One little ball of metal pieces and circuits escaping a whole division of Stormtroopers, allegedly trained and drilled to perfection. Well, obviously not quite.  
Kylo Ren asked the man if the droid had evaded capture from them by his metallic, unthinking self. The lieutenant shivered.  
“Not exactly sir,” he pressed out from between pursed lips, “It had help.”  
Kylo turned around slowly, his mask concealing the rage which started to distort his features.  
“We have no confirmation but we believe FN-21 37 may have helped him escape”  
Of course. Kylo would have snickered, had he not been so searingly angry. _Fucking_ infidels, _useless plastic heads, waste of space and training._

He let himself be overwhelmed with malice and let his lightsaber burn to buzzing life and destroyed the console in front of him with random, unguided laser slashes. When his anger had ebbed, he composed himself, shutting down his weapon and braced himself for the rest of the news. The underling’s discomfort was that of a messenger with even more bad bearings. Kylo Ren could feel it and something else, fuzzy and distant, a familiar glow he dreaded to be connected to any of this.  
“Anything else?” He asked, because the lieutenant was far too afraid of him to go on unbidden.  
“The two were accompanied by a girl,” he finally said and just as quickly, Kylo’s self control was stripped away again. He turnt on his heel and lifted his hand, making the little, pathetic man fly all the way into his menacing grip, chocking both with the help of the force and his own muscle.  
“What girl?” He asked, but he already knew the answer. He has felt her glow. He has felt it pulse to greater life than ever. The girl on Jakku.

***

Hux left them, but not after throwing a death glare his way that didn’t impress Kylo in the slightest. Should the pale ginger ever give him a halfway decent enough reason, he would crush his stupid windpipe in a matter of seconds and let his remains explode in deep space. He would watch and smile while he shattered into a million pieces and if he could, kill the snivelling rat a hundred times over. Alas, today was not that day.  
As soon as they were alone Supreme Leader Snoke focused his attention, along with his mental x-ray on Kylo. He knew the feeling well. The stunted master of Darkness probing around his head.

He had learned to give free access to almost any place he wanted to peruse. To the Sith Lord, it would feel like an all-access-pass but he was fooled. Had been fooled since the beginning. Kylo would have been proud of that achievement, had the lord not been able to sense that pride and feel confused about it just enough to go question the wholeness of Kylo’s mind in his grip.  
Kylo kept precious little secrets but those, so far, had been left untouched and unknown by his master. Still, his secrets had never mattered to the business at hand. Now they did.  
“There has been an awakening,” Snoke declared and looked through Kylo’s mind for the recognition, “have you felt it?”  
“Yes,” he offered merely, replaying the surge of energy he felt on the bridge of his ship when an previously low glimmer turned into a ball of bright light, it was all for the Supreme Leader’s benefit. He was impatient and did not like sifting through all of Kylo’s petty notions and thoughts.

“There’s something more,” his master said, quickly moving on to the next topic, the one Klyo felt, he was really interested in, “The droid we seek is aboard the Millennium Falcon. In the hands of your father - Han Solo.”  
There was a clear beat, a sharp silence while Snoke scanned Kylo’s fleeting notions.  
“He means nothing to me,” Kylo Ren said and willed it to be true.  
“Even you, last of the knights of Ren, have never faced such a test,” Snoke’s voice sounded almost worried, almost invested, almost like that of a father but it was laced with bile and venom, the kind only Kylo felt through the link provided by the force.  
“By the grace of your training, I will not be seduced,” he reassured and offered all the disappointments Han Solo had ever delivered his only son with as a means of convincing the old master of his resolve. The resolve to do what was necessary, to do what Supreme Leader Snoke wanted him to do.  
“We shall see,” the creature muttered and rose, the image of his hologram flickering, “we shall see.”

***

There was a resurfacing of energy on the planet the New Jedi training centre stood alone on, and was otherwise undisturbed from the rest of the galaxy. The bright blue aura surrounding Luke Skywalker that never quite left Ben’s senses, even when the Jedi Master was lightyears away, flooded his mind like a tidal wave. And it was joined by other masses of static. A faint orange glow, some yellow and a painful white, gleaming, energy pushing onto his consciousness; small but powerful. Exhilarating even. Ben felt it as if it was a presence in the room and he yearned for it from the first second as if it was the force itself.

That was her, he knew it. And surely, as it came closer, he was able to decipher the different aspects of her strength. It was hope, and compassion, great care and affection, laced with confidence and a feisty sense of self. She was young but already more wholesome than he could probably ever hope to be. The darkness did not tuck at her, he did not sense a shred of it in her. The darkness he felt was devastatingly and solitarily, all his own.

He was content to be discontented with her. He had decided that he was going to not accept this girl as an equal. He was a Solo, he was the grandson of the mightiest Jedi that ever lived and he would not be bested by the granddaughter of his mere teacher. He let his long limbs slurp unenthusiastically to the hangar and waited for Master Luke’s shuttle to touch down on the polished marble.

As the hatch of the ship was lowered and his Jedi master emerged, followed by a middle aged man and woman, first there was no trace of the child, even though her glimmer hit him in the face like a fist. She was so painfully pure it nearly sent tears springing to his eyes.  
And then, sooner than he had prepared himself for, the girl popped through the gap between her parents and she ran to Luke’s side, taking his hand and taking in her surroundings. She was sickeningly adorable in her wide-eyed wonder.

Ben stood frozen to his spot while two fundamental truths formed in the forefront of his mind, louder than his demons. One: She was the most powerful being he had ever encountered, including his master and own mother. And Two: he could not hate her. Not even a little bit.  
When she caught his eye, there was no trace of weariness, no hint of reserve. Instead, she beamed at him, shining like a beacon of light and they made their way to Ben as he stood in front of the assortment of the Jedi hopefuls in Master Luke’s training.

“Ben,” Master Luke said, a warm smile on his face, along with a slight twitch of his eyes as he felt the storm raging in his Padawan, “It’s good to see you.”  
Ben used the energy provided by the girl to tap into her light and get the Jedi master off his case, “It’s good to see you too.”  
Luke seemed fooled enough by it and turned to introduce Dune Kenobi and his wife. Then, he glanced down at the little girl by his side, she was maybe seven. A tiny little thing that 16-year-old Ben towered over with his six feet and counting.  
“And this is their daughter,” Luke continued his round of introduction, “Reyata Kenobi.”

***

He called out to her so often, her three syllable name became a time-consuming nuisance in no time at all, so he had shortened it to Rey within her first week of training. Master Luke held up the longest, but three months in, even her parents had started calling her by her nickname and one time over dinner, her mother smiled over at Ben much like his own mother would have.  
“I like it,” she said, “Rey. We called her Reya when she was a baby but Rey sounds like light, doesn’t it? Like a ray of sunshine.”  
“And that she is,” Master Luke interjected like a proud uncle, prouder than he had ever been of his real blood, of Ben, who was literally right there.  
Hatred bubbled up in the pit of Ben’s stomach but Rey, by now scarily in tune with his emotions, found him there with her mind and thought inside him, into his soul, with a clear, bell-like voice that feels almost like a caress, brimming with innocence and mindfulness: “Don’t be mad, Benny, you’re sunshine too.”

Ben had more bad days then good ones the time, constantly criss-crossing the line between light and dark and it was tearing him apart. When he slept, there was a sickening, yet exhilarating presence in his head, a cloaked figure that introduced himself one terribly dark night as Master Snoke and he was whispering in his ear; promises of wholeness, of belonging and assurances that he cared for him, wanted him to achieve his true potential. He showed him how good it felt to have a clear cut allegiance and as Ben dreamt, he was whole for the first time. The darkness was wrapping him in like a blanket, like a cocoon that would transform him into something stronger, someone better.

But then he would always wake and come to it and, without fail, there was Rey, at the edges of his mind, beaming and gleaming and thinking her golden thoughts onto his consciousness and he fell into the pull of her light, as if a hook was driven into his heart.

One time, she chased him around the training centre, her practice stick always ready to attack. She laughed a birdlike-laugh as she charged at him and disarming her took him yet longer than it used to just weeks ago. Once her stick fell to the ground with a wooden thud, he took three large leaps until he was directly above her and lifted her high into the air. A grin split his face as he carried her over his shoulder. She was lithe and small, and the only weight she really possessed was that of the Force cursing through her system. Withering in his grip, she balled up her little fists and play-punched his back while laughing all the way down the corridor.

“Bennyyyyyy,” she dragged out the last syllable of her nickname for him, as if it was a chewing ball and chuckled when he shifted her in his arms. Now, he was carrying her like a babe, her entirety enclosed by his right arm, while the left hand tickled her stomach under bubbly, childish giggles.  
“Benny, stop,” she demanded and contorted her body into small and bigger shapes in oder to deny him access to her. She tried to attack his mind too, but she was too preoccupied with the sensation of tickles to fully reach into him.

She was almost eight years old then and Ben thought that he would’ve never become so twisted between forces if he’d had a sister like her growing up. Or a friend. Or an _anyone_.

***

Six months into Rey’s eighth year, she stopped talking to Ben, from one day to the other with a resolve and relentlessness remarkable for a child. It bothered him more than he could say, especially because it left all the more room in the day for Snoke to corrupt his thoughts with his plans and ideas of usurping, of joining him. Plans, that seemed sweeter, every time Ben tried and failed again to penetrate Rey’s formerly open mind. How could she be so much stronger than him at that age? Why had she shut him out, too? Just like everyone else? She’d been his one friend, sad as that was. A seventeen year old boy who managed to alienate every other kid in training but Rey and her endless light had been there since the first day he knew her. Why had she abandoned him like the rest? What on earth had he done now?  
I won’t abandon you, Snoke promised, his voice predatory and dangerous in the back of Ben’s head, but tempting none the less.

As days passed and it all became too much to navigate, Ben sought out his ever estranging Master Luke. He had not come to him for help in a long time and he felt all the more stupid as he did. It seemed so beyond silly. He was supposed to be a man by now, yet he was caught up beyond recognition about a child-friend, sister in his mind, who had so abruptly denied him their connection.  
His voice was small and his eyes stung when he sat down beside Master Luke at his inviting gesture; “I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong.”  
“My dear Ben,” Luke said, something twisting his face and a sad tinge to his voice, “You have done nothing wrong. But it is not my place to tell you. I am afraid, you will have to ask her yourself why she is keeping you at a distance.”  
“She won’t speak to me,” he said spitefully, “She won’t let me have the truth of it.”  
“Oh, Ben,” Luke sighed, defeated, “When has that ever stopped you? We both know how convincing you can be if you want to. You are linked, wether either of you like it or not - and you both use this connection well. Or at least you used to. Restore it, or don’t. But it’s beyond my power, my Padawan.”

Confused and frustrated, Ben started walking to Rey’s bedroom. Stupid Master Luke, of course he could not help him. Him and his light and his answers to be found within you. Of course it’s useless to hope for anything from him. Hah, he probably had just the solution, but he did not give a damn about Ben and just withheld it to torture him. He would say it was to teach him the ways of the Force and balance but really, it was just humiliation..more proof that Ben Solo was a failure at everything.

When he pounded at Rey’s door it was more forceful and aggressive than necessary and he felt her glimmer waver, a brief slip-up of her control allowing him a glimpse into an unprecedented jumble of thoughts in her mind.  
“Go away,” she shouted from behind the door.  
“No,” he insisted, stubborn like her, “you can’t keep avoiding me forever. Just tell me what I did so I can apologise and you can stop being mad at me.”  “I’m not mad at you,” she yelled, sounding anything but.  
“Rey,” he yelled back, impatiently, “ _Reyata_!”

This broke her, he could feel the crack in her armour if it was all he felt and then he heard tiny, light steps on wooden floor and the door was open.  
Little Rey was already in her nightgown, her long hair braided down and waving from her steps. She glared up at him, twice as tall as her.  
“I’m not mad at you,” she repeated, her voice sounded older than her years.  
“Then why?” He demanded, entering her room unbidden and found the edge of her bed to sit down on. He thought if he wasn’t looking down at her, she would be more inclined to talk to him. Getting on the same level often helped with children, that he had learned.  
She kept her distance and he felt a fight in her. She wouldn’t let him see why she was troubled but he could feel the turmoil of something going on and one emotion was strong enough for him to place. It was searing and terrible, sickening shame and he wanted to take it all from her the second he could make out what it was.

“Tell me,” he bid her then, his voice soft and gentle. He tried coaxing her out like an untrusting animal.  
“I can’t,” she said, her eyes filling up with reluctance and anger directed at herself, “it’s too embarrassing.”  
Ben didn’t understand but he kept going. He could feel that the weight of the secret was unbearable for her and half of her little mind wanted it to just go away. He wanted to help.  
“Hey, it’s me?” He whispered, “Stupid, lanky Benny. I don’t care about embarrassing. Not with you.”  
She remained mum and just shook her head and then pressed her hands onto her eyes as if that could hide her.

“Rey,” if at all possible, his voice was even softer now, like a feather barely grazing his vocal chords, “If you can’t tell me, show me. Just let go.”  
She did nothing, she stood, face in hand but something shifted between them and he could feel the walls in her mind being dismantled, bit by bit, interrupted by breaks of her holding back and trying to put pieces back but she unraveled her mind to him at the end, anyway.

Ben went from confused, to surprised, to slightly ashamed himself, to confused again as she let him see dancing images, dreams, from night or day, he wasn’t sure. Most of them were him, some of them memories but the feelings were all messed up. There was endless mock battles around the training ground, endless meals and lazy days spent by the shore and each frame with his face in it became softer as they progressed.

Then the memories were joined by things that never happened. He saw himself smile at her with a look he had never given anyone and felt her cheek redden under his hand cupping her face. He saw her, but an undefined, taller version of her. Big Rey was clouded in uncertainty, in weird hues. Visibly grown, a female form but with a face that shifted.  
She imagined how she would look as a woman grown, and she wasn't sure how she would turn out. He was the same and the real Ben gasped in something that must’ve been shock, as the mental image of him she had conjured up, wrapped long arms around her shifting older form and then the Big Rey transformed into something ethereal, wrapped in a tunic with hair braided and burned into curls as a nondescript man put her hand in his, in her Fantasy-Ben’s.  
A word formed above the onslaught of imagery, turned into a sentence shortly after.

 _I’d marry Ben_.

It was her voice, young, bell-like and innocent and he could feel through her how that simple sentence became a parasite, eating her up and growing into a solid feeling until everything about Ben felt wrong because she suddenly loved him with a woman’s heart in a children’s body and she didn’t want any of it and still wanted it too much.  
He felt her wanting to pull at her hair so she would grow up faster, or to stop thinking of him and he felt deep and dark desolation of a spurned child who already feared his reproach. Because of course, he could never love her, she was only a kid. Not yet ten. And he was so perfect.

That maybe shocked him the most. How beautiful he was to her. Even though she knew his darkness as well as he did, it did not taint him in her head. She accepted it as a part of him and was never worried he could succumb to it. She was so certain in his inherent goodness, he wanted to hold her soul and keep it inside him, just so he could feel her assuredness.

When it was over, sadness and shame settled between them. Rey was empty and humiliated, unwilling to look at him, her face still firmly pushed against her face.  
Ben shut her thoughts out for a while in order to process the information offered and to come up with some sort of way to handle it.

Rey, little, baby Rey had fallen in love for the first time, an innocent, but bigger love than she knew what to do with, fed with fairytale dreams and grown-up-wishes she could not yet place and it was with him. Rey loved Ben, not like a sister, not like a friend, but how she supposed a woman would love a man. Now, what was he to make of that? He had wanted to know why she had shut him down and now that he knew, she’d just wanted to save herself from rejection, or from her feelings to confuse her even more, he was at a complete loss of what to say to her. Anything at all to make her stop feeling so wounded because it killed him just the same.

He knew he needed to make her move on from this..but how? Without even the inkling of a plan, he moved away from the bed and walked toward her, sinking down to his knees so he was of her height. Slowly, with great seriousness, he plucked her hands from her face and she looked away, reluctantly, her eyes darting away, then back at him and away again.

“It’s okay,” he assured her, his voice quiet and sincere, “I’m not angry with you. Things like that…happen. There’s nothing you could do. Hey, it’s okay.”  
“It’s horrible,” she said, with the deep, raw humiliation only a child can feel, “I’m so stupid.”  
“No, you’re not.”  
“Yes, stupid like a cow,” she insisted, “I’m a child and you’re so big, I’m such an idiot for thinking you could love me.”  
“Oh Rey,” his chest burst open with a pain older than life, it was as if his own heart broke, because of course he did not love her like that and she could feel it in him, “I do love you. But not like that. I can’t love you like that. You’re a little girl, okay? That’s not your fault but I…I simply can’t feel that. Do you understand?”  
She nodded and looked at him for the first time, “I was just so afraid what you would do if you found out.”  
“This doesn’t change anything for me,” he promised, “I’d just say we…wait until this passes and then we can go back to how things were, okay?”  
She nodded once more and he felt hope spring up in her again and saw a flicker of that one specific fantasy, the one of Big, shapeless Rey and him, getting married under a flowery canopy.  
He smiled weakly at her and half nodded, half shook his head at her; “I can’t think about you like that, Rey.”  
She understood, and seemed older then, in her acceptance of things and he felt an overwhelming urge to hug her but she recoiled from him as she felt it, too soon. He just hoped things would calm down within her…and that they could go back to just being Ben and Rey again.

They never did.

***  
He chased her through the woods of some meaningless planet where they had confirmed the rebels and fugitives to hide out with the damned droid. She fought him with a blaster, less than sure-footed and with miserable aim. She truly had forgotten all her training. At least this he’d done right. He was hard on her trail and found her no matter how well she ducked and attempted to hide. The light she emitted was so bright and so engrained in his brain, he would find her everywhere.

Eventually, they ended up facing each other, her arm outstretched and finger pulling the trigger of the blaster, He dodged the shot with his lightsaber and then used a force blow to render her immobile. She stood rigid, protesting his hold over her and he had to take a second to compose himself. To come to terms with the reality of the person standing before him. Damn the Force and damn destiny. He had hoped to never see her again and yet had wanted and dreaded nothing more. And here she was, through time and space, back in his path, shining like a sun.

Yes, now she stood before him, a woman grown. She must have been well in her nineteenth year, he thought and the traces of her childhood had been grained away by sand and sun, having formed a woman lithe with survival and with slender curves from little access to food and luxury. The girl he had left on Jakku so many years ago had grown tall, if not by much, and stronger than he would have thought.

“The girl I’ve heard so much about,” he said and was almost startled by the unbidden tenderness in his voice. He could not allow weakness now, not for something irrelevant as this scrawny shadow of the past. Reyata Kenobi would not impair his judgement, not so many years after he left Ben Solo behind. She remained unresponsive, merely staring him down while trying to fight his binding power. Kylo approached her, wary but curious all the same. He looked at her skin, at her hair she still wore in the same braids her mother put them in as a child. It felt like a chilly renaissance, seeing it on her like that, as if a faint memory came back to bustling life and as he watched a drop of sweat travel on smooth skin from her cheek to her chest, he realised that she was _beautiful_.

“The droid. Where is it?” He asked her, pushing that unwelcome notion away while encircling. She meant nothing to him anymore. Why would he care that she was beautiful? She was nothing. He had made sure of that.

Rey kept annoyingly mum, a trait she obviously still possessed, even as he stopped behind her and let his lightsaber sizzle beside her ear - a threat and a promise of pain. She did not respond to even this. Kylo Ren grew impatient but also noted that his weapon was not intimidating her, he had to read her mind if he wanted to get anything out of her.

He stepped in closer, feeling her body’s heat for the first time and feeling a hummingbird heartbeat beneath a carefully upheld resistance. If he was ever honest with himself, he would’ve admitted that he was scared to reopen this connection he knew he had with her. Afraid of the light he had been able to feel from miles away and that scorched him even from a distance, afraid also, that she would still somehow he able to remember him. Still, it was no use, it had to be done. So he went in quick, single-minded. Just looking for the droid. Rey was weak in her resistance, her mind wiped of all the defences she had known as a child and he found the BB-unit quickly, found it buzzing and drawn to her, trusting her and then - oh. This was interesting.

“The map, you’ve seen it,” he stated with a mixture of surprise and triumph. The map was in her head. Little Rey had what he needed to crush that silly rebellion into dust.  
A random stormtrooper rattled Kylo from his thoughts as he appeared from behind the trees.  
“Sir, resistance fighters,” he informed him matter-of-factly.  
Kylo jumped slightly, only then noticing how close he’d gotten to the girl in his curiosity.  
“We need more troops,” the storm trooper said but Kylo knew better.  
“Pull the division out,” he said, keeping Rey just where she was, “Forget the droid, we have what we need”  
Kylo stepped behind the girl, the woman, he corrected himself, and snapped her lights out with a tiny flick of a finger. She fell and he picked her up in one swift motion and carried Rey Kenobi in his arms, like he had so many times when she was just a girl.  
The stormtrooper offered to take her from his hands but he just glared at him. He would not let this one out of his sight. As he carried her to his ship, he could feel both his father and his mother nearing him. He did not linger to face them.

***  
  
When the day of the ‘mutiny’ as the Supreme Leader called it, came, Ben was of a grim mind and blind resolution. he had learnt to keep secrets better than anyone and nobody suspected a thing. His fellow knights of Ren fell on the training centre like a swarm of insects. The Jedi were hopelessly outnumbered and it did not take long until the boys were all dead. Ben, no, Kylo Ren, that was his new name, had killed two. Darius, a painfully annoying twelve-year-old who had thought he was the funniest of the bunch and always made fun of him, was the easier one to kill. He soiled his breeches and cried when Kylo Ren’s new lightsaber stabbed through his stomach. The other kid, the oldest boy, was a bit harder because while he was a little dim-witted, he had never really done him any offence. But alas, he had to go. There could be no more contenders to the Force, no more Jedi’s.

Kylo Ren stalked through the training center, feeling the lights of his fellow trainees snuffed out one by one. Master Luke tried to reason with him, inside the great hall. He argued for Ben’s soul, horror plastered across his face, as he too, felt the loss of lives around the vast castle. Three remained.  
“You don't have to do this, Ben,” he said, “look for the light in you.”  
“Ben is dead,” he said, stoically, “I’m Kylo Ren now.”  
“Nonsense,” Luke said.  
Two remained.  
“You have kept me from fulfilling my potential,” Kylo accused him, anger swelling in his chest, “you never wanted me to succeed, you didn’t believe in me. You did this! Now, look what I can do.”  
He gestured around the room, soaking in the terror and darkness around them and throwing it all back to Luke.

One remained. Luke sensed it too, and his eyes widened. One remained, a bright, gleaming white.  
_One_ remained. _Rey._

Kylo tried to reprimand himself for the fear that gripped his heart. But before long, it overwhelmed him, a searing hot “no” hashing through his brain as Master Luke went in and out of focus. And then his feet carried him forth on their own accord. He left his broken Master behind and ran toward her light, as he always did. He could feel her terrified and confused, hiding under her bed, jumping at every little sound he heard. She had sensed that her parents were in great danger if not worse..she had not felt her mother or her father in many minutes but she refused to connect the dots as to why that was. She longed for safety and she wanted to scream and cry but she did not dare.

Kylo, having the advantage of knowing the place in and out, reached her room before the scavenging knights could and he broke open the door she had barricaded herself. She whimpered under her hard-wood bed frame.  
“Rey,” he whispered urgently, “It’s me, I’m gonna get you out of here.”  
A shriek escaped her and he raised up high walls of defence, even though she did not try to link with him at all as she darted out from under the bed and flew into his arms. Now, she let herself cry into his newly donned black robes. She was too confused to make anything out of them.

“What is going on?” She sobbed into his chest.  
“I don’t know but I will bring you somewhere safe, I know a way to the spare ship.”  
Rey did not question him and only paused once in the corridor on their hasty run through the castle. “My parents?” It was a question she already knew the answer to.  
He shook his head almost imperceptibly and dragged her on, feeling anger, loss and grief curse through her all the way. They had nearly made it when they ran into a knight of Ren. A mask was obscuring his face and Kylo wasn’t sure who exactly stood before them but he could feel bloodlust and exhilaration and an inhumane joy drawn from killing. The knights thoughts zeroed in on Rey, who half hid her body behind Kylo’s, whom she still thought to be her Benny, and grabbed his hand hard enough to draw blood.

Before the other knight could do anything, Kylo snapped his fingers and Rey fell down behind him, her mind shut off from the world and a fragment of a second later, those same fingers were reaching for the knight and he chocked him from a distance. He had never properly practiced this move before but he knew that his grandfather had been famous for it. Surely, he would have the power in his veins to use the force the way Darth Vader had - and he did. The other boy sank to his knees, clutching at his throat and turning blue, before he started to shake and struggle pointlessly until the life left his body.

Kylo felt triumph and a red hot force cursing through him. Supreme Leader Snoke was right, this was his place, his corner. This was where his light shone. Without thinking much, he grabbed the helmet from the nondescript face of his late fellow night and donned his sprawled out robe. When Rey woke up, Ben would be gone - only Kylo would remain.  
Snoke crept into his head when his ship entered space but he deceived him, telling him he was chasing Luke Skywalker, who had truly disappeared when the battle was decidedly lost. Kylo had no interest in following him though, but Snoke, as well as he knew him, could not pry that out of his head.

Instead, Kylo Ren flew, half across the galaxy until he found a small desert planet that seemed remote enough to hide a child of ten and a half amongst dunes and scraps.  
What Kylo had not expected on Jakku though, were his mother and father, ten minutes after he landed. Mother, he thought, knowing that she was the one who found him and he worked hard on severing his connection to her. His parents were pale when they came face to face with him and he had a rattled awake, terrified Rey tucked to his side who struggled against him. She recognised Leia and Han and screamed out to them but Kylo silenced her mouth by use of the force.

“What are you doing, B-“, his father said, incredulous and his sons name froze on his lips when Kylo stopped him using the Force.  
“My name is Kylo Ren,” he said and ever so slightly dipped his head downward, to where Rey was standing and impossibly, his father understood the single straight thought Kylo could form.

_I don’t want her to know that it’s me._

  
And to Kylo’s even greater surprise, his father nodded, just as little of a gesture, and never tried to call him by his old name again.  
“Why are you doing this?” Han said instead.  
“Come home with us,” his mother chimed in, barely holding on to her sanity as he could tell, “stop this folly!”  
“I can’t,” he said, his voice sounded hollow and mechanical from the mask, “This is my path.”  
“No,” his mother insisted and took a step toward him, he retreated.  
“One more step and she dies,” he told her and tightened his grip on Rey who winced in terror. Closing his mother out of his head, he let let her feel only resolve. She didn't see how much he dreaded her not falling for the threat. She didn’t know just how not-ready he was to kill Rey.  
“Leave,” he said again, through gritted teeth with spit shooting against the mask and back onto his lips, “leave now, or I _will_ kill her.”

Han began to tuck at his wives vest, always so quick to give up on him and he managed to get her to back away, always struggling, mind racing and looking for alternatives. Han never saw the disappointment on his son’s face behind his mask. Never saw how unsurprised and yet devastated he is that his father didn’t even properly fight for him. Han had simply resigned and got back onto that damned ship of his. When the hatch was closed, Kylo Ren released Rey from his mental hold and held her only by the arm, with his bare hands.  
  
“No, come back,” she screamed at the space ship as it started to soar and eventually turned upward, headed for space, “Come back, don’t leave me!”  
“Quiet, girl,” he said, his voice feeling as detached as his former name, as his former life.  
“Who are you, where are you taking me?” The little girl asked with impressive bravery and tried to probe his impenetrable mind. The dark side was hard at work within him, he felt its power rise and holding its own against her bright, tempting light. She could not reach into him anymore.

“Unimportant,” he told her and started to drag her away from that place. He knew what he had to do and thanks to the Force, he was fairly certain that he could. They walked for a while and Rey said nothing, she did not call out for her family, knowing it was futile but she did imagine Master Luke and tried to reach out to him. Yet, after a while, Master Luke slipped from her mind as she remembered Ben and Kylo felt his breath hitch when she focussed all her thoughts in a desperate plea, desperate cry for help and she cried for Ben.  
Kylo had shut Ben down, he’d let him die, let him fall into oblivion. Ben was gone and Rey was searching for him. It was no use. The last bit of Ben had died in that training centre and the grief she felt when that realisation sank in, nearly brought Kylo to his knees.

When they finally stopped walking, she was sadder than he had ever felt her be. In so deep, the only thing she wanted to do was swim down, drown and fall apart in that grief and he sank down into the sand in front of her.  
“I can make that go away,” he said, it wasn’t Ben Solo’s voice anymore, “I can stop the pain.”  
Rey, looking like a child for the first time in months, snivelled and finally, nodded.

And so Kylo raised his hand and went through her brain, found the memories, the pain, the faces of everyone she knew and took them from her, one by one, until only her parents remained, her parents and himself. Ben. He was half-tempted to leave Ben with her, a small spec in the mind of a small child, a faint, distant memory of a boy that had died. But he thought better of it and erased every trace of Ben Solo from her young mind as well. As if he had never even existed.  
Lastly, he erased all knowledge of the force, took away all her training, all her experience, took away her idea of the force until all he could find in her were the chimes of myths, things she would take for legends growing up. When he was done, she had no more concept of any of it, not even the man in the mask who stood before her.

He held his fingers splayed out in front of her face and spoke slowly, focussing, like Master Luke had taught him: “You were left here by your parents, you believe they will come back to you one day. You need to stay alive for that. Survive, Rey, you have to survive. Remember, you are no one important, but you must still live.”  
And then he made her faint a second time. He would not be there when she came to it again.

***

“Where am I?” Rey had woken up and quickly found herself locked in a contraption, designed to keep the likes of her immobile. It was an interrogation chamber, a torture chamber, if one was honest but Kylo only pretended to be ready to do that to her. If there was any way, he wanted to find another way to get what he needed from her.  
He took a deep breath and turned his face to her, he had kneeled down on the floor to take in her face from the lower angle, “You’re my guest.” He was smiling beneath the mask, trying to sound friendly.

“Where are the others?” She asked, hiding her fear well. He couldn’t help be impressed with her bravery, even after all these years.  
“You mean the murderers, traitors and thieves you call friends?” He answered her without missing a beat, “You’ll be relieved to hear I have no idea.”  
Rey looked at him and her mind ran a thousand miles an minute, rapidly, she went through different scenarios of how to break free from her dire circumstances and every last one ended with him being pierced by his own lightsaber.  
“You still want to kill me?” He stated, amused. And something else he did not give himself time to name.  
“That happens when you are being hunted by a creature in a mask,” she retorted, proud and spiteful. _Gods_ , he thought, _this is still the same girl_.

And he knew that girl, knew how to break her, knew that she was full of love and compassion and affection for living things. And he was no living thing to her, just a creature of darkness. He rejoiced, at the revelation. _Of course._ She needed to see his face, to put a physiognomy to the dreaded enemy. So, without hesitation, he brought both hands up to his mask and unclasped it, the steel springing from his face and he stood up, straightening is spine so he was revealed as a man before her in his full height. For a second he was afraid that she would remember him but the only thing that flashed across her features was surprise.

As if she had not truly expected a human being under that thing. He took a few quick strides and set the helmet down into the ashes of a fireplace. The silence between them was loaded and he felt a wave of mixed emotions rolling his way from the girl in chains. She felt a pull to him not unlike gravity, although she could not put a definite term to it. He knew well that it was an echo of their connection but unlike her, he wasn’t surprised by it…after all, he had felt this way since before they’d even met for the first time and had never forgot about it. She was mistaking it now for a forbidden attraction she quickly tried to stifle and he could not help the bewilderment at that particular sensation.

When he encircled her, like a wild beast, she was suddenly eight years old again, her eyes darting away from him as she geared up for the suspected assault against her mind. Just like it had all those years ago, her glance slithered back to him for a moment before she could look away again. She was thinking that she should be more appalled by him and she was trying hard to conjure up repulsion when he spoke. Kylo was pleased to notice that she couldn’t.

“Tell me about the droid,” he demanded, closer to her now, so close he could see the hairs on her neck stand up.  
“He’s a BB unit with a silinium drive and a thermal hyperscape indicator,” she shot right back at him.  
“He carries a section of a navigational chart,” he interjected, opting for bluntness, “And we have the rest, recovered from the archives of the empire. But we need the last piece and somehow you convinced the droid to show it to you.”  
He let silence stretch between them, taxed her and put venom in his voice. It was a deliberate act, speaking to the unimportant girl he himself has made her into, “You…a scavenger.”  
Rey was surprised by the unpleasant tuck at her heart which forced a tear from her eyes. Kylo Ren was not.  
“You know I can take whatever I want?” A bitter, petty part of him revelled in the way the tables had turned. He was much stronger than her now; versed and well trained with the Force, drenched in the Dark Side and even if he was not yet as mighty as Vader had been, he was getting there.  
All the while Rey was nothing, just a scrap rat, a wild desert thing, who had no idea of her true legacy.

She couldn’t even resist his probing into her mind, couldn’t even remember how he used to do this all the time and how they used to peruse each others heads freely, with the shameless lack of privacy of children. He moved even closer to her and started digging into the windings of her brain.

“You’re so lonely,” he said, observing endless hours spent talking to herself and lonesome scavenger hunts for spare parts in endless space ship ruins and he could feel her estrangement from the world and all the creatures in it and how it cut her like a knife. He knew the feeling well and it touched some buried, feral thing inside him too, something raw, he immediately tried to push down.

“So afraid to leave,” he said, watching the sky above Jakku through her memory turn into every possible shade and feel her wishing on any star, wishing the lights to become a space ship. He heard the echo of a familiar voice, saying ‘You believe they will come back to you one day’ and he realised that it was his own. He didn’t linger there but went on to sift through her memories while she wriggled under the intrusion.

He saw light turn to darkness and her makeshift bed, saw ghosts of dreams and her loneliness piercing, being joined by something else. Something grown, a…longing and a fantasy. He saw so many memories of her own fingers ghosting over her body, her rising and falling, exposed body glowing in the moonlight as she sought some sort of release, a way to feel comforted from the loneliness and he saw the shadow she conjured up for these explorations.  
He was tall, dark hair framing a long face and his lithe, delicate fingers eerily familiar. He could not make out distinct features but, in a mental slip, he supplied her with his own. It was unwitting but something split in her face and she winced, as if she had just seen him turn into the man who pleasured her in secret reveries, just the way he had just imagined it in his weakness and her temptation.

“At night,” he mumbled, his voice raw and raspy, his lower body burning up with something more animal than man, and so beneath him, he nearly blushed, “…desperate to sleep.”  
She tried to focus on the ceiling as his eyes fell onto her lips unbidden. They were pulsing ever so slightly, blood thumping through her veins and he followed the drumming of her pulse to her neck and back up again. She was so beautiful, bright like sunshine. He felt warning bells ringing in his ear, and forced himself to focus only on her mind.

“You imagine an ocean. I see it,” he said as they both pushed the images of her exposed body, withering with pleasure, away, “I see the island,” he still couldn’t look away from her lips until- “And Han Solo.”  
He studied her recent memories more intently: “You feel like he’s the father you never had. He would have disappointed you.”  
Then, and only then, did she start to really resist: “Get out of my head.”  
Kylo felt something inside her snap back into a place, a faint echo so far but still. He put a bit of distance between them, as he would have when she was a child and they were sparring with only their minds, “I know you’ve seen the map. It’s in there.”  
He held out his arm and opened his fingers, drawing her out of the contraption, “And now you’ll give it to me.”

Rey was pulled forward further by his might and started to clench her jaw when he started sending sharp, piercing jabs of intruding thoughts her way. She felt pain but beneath that, exhilaration, something of a challenge and something that felt like a happy memory she couldn’t remember and her brow furrowed when this unexpected elation was matched up with familiarity and the impossible link she had felt earlier. She didn’t understand it and it scared her.  
“Don’t be afraid,” he told her, gentler than he planned, “I feel it too.”  
“I’m not giving you anything,” Rey insisted stoically.  
“We’ll see,” he breathed out and attacked the borders of her mind again. This time more defences sprung to life and stopped him short. He was hit with a wall and repositioned himself, getting closer to her head, so close his hand could almost close around her forehead.

He pushed on with newly awoken spite and the ghost of millions of past attempts at this and because he was so intent on breaking her open, he completely missed how she snook past his own defences and was suddenly inside his own head in turn.  
It was a weird sensation, like listening to a song from your childhood you believed to have forgotten, but then finding you can still sing along. That’s how she felt back in his mind again. Only a bit different from time passed now, hardened and with more vigour, a persistence and elegance in her thoughts that was new, inherently female and enticing in an entirely different way.

She started taking an inch of him with every one he had taken from her and Kylo had to refocus some of his energy to keep her from those well and long kept secrets that pertained to him and her.  
It was a splitting task, trying to overpower her senses while at the same time keeping her away from his darkest shadows. He had to give a little way, had to give her something and his defences slipped somewhere nasty but nowhere near where he dreaded her most.

She had risen even further in her straps now, and faced him with anger, eyes bulging until she cracked something in him open. Then she gasped.  
“You,” she huffed, “you’re afraid.” They studied each other, diametrically opposed, neither giving more of an inch.  
“That you will never be as strong,” she pushed harshly into his brain, “as _Darth Vader_.”  
Her voice dealt a low blow and he stumbled back, the connection severed if only for the moment.

He would be getting nothing out of her anymore. It was almost like back then, he thought, panting and grasping for breath, it had felt like them. The notion was terrifying in its effect on him. He tried to shake the whirl of anger, longing and elation in his head away. How did that happen? How did she still hold any sort of power over him?  
Rey stared at him, somewhat shocked by her own achievement and not fully understanding what it meant at all. He could do nothing. Only leave. Who knows what he would’ve done if he’d spent just one more minute under that gaze of hers. All of her power was still there and he had the sinking feeling that he’d just woken it anew.

***

Lord Commander Snoke’s voice boomed across the cathedral. Angry was not strong enough of a word to describe it; “The Scavenger! Resisted you!?”  
“She is strong with the Force,” Kylo yelled, pointing back into the general direction of the interrogation room, “Untrained, but stronger than she knows.”  
“And the droid?” His master was gracious enough to move on but he gave Hux the best cue to start dragging Kylo down as the rat would and him and Snoke went over the details of the new strategy, while Kylo tried to keep his rage in check.

He waited for an opportunity to jump back in and when it arose quickly said: “Supreme Leader, I can get the map from the girl. I just need your guidance.”  
The lord looked at him with clear disproval and spoke darkly: “If what you say about this girl is true, bring her to me.”

And Kylo went to do as his master had bid. He used the way back to her cell to toughen his defence, put some half-truths in place of real ones to be prepared for anything that might happen once Snoke had both him and Rey in his sight. But when he approached the interrogation chamber, the door was open and Rey was gone. There was a hole in his chest, caving in as sudden as the realisation that he had lost her set in, and then a small “No” tumbled from his lips.  
Something in his head short-circuited and he lashed out, his lightsaber ablaze, raging and thrashing through and through the room.  
In a flash, a pathetic thought raced through his brain; _I just got her back, I can’t lose her again._  
He slashed the binding chair in two.

***

He knew she was there when he killed her father. He could feel her glimmering light across the way, could feel her everywhere but he kept her firmly out of his head. When his lightsaber slashed through his fathers chest, he felt her pain along with that of Han Solo - and that of Ben.

Han Solo fell, already dead, and the devastation and self-loathing Kylo felt, were turned into strength by the Dark Side. It drowned out the doubts and then, when a shot from Chewbacca's crossbow burned a hole through his side, she screamed at him, her hatred still bursting with light and he was furious because it still touched him.  
The traitor grabbed her by the elbow and they ran off and Kylo Ren screamed, not for the pain searing through his body but for blinding, consuming frustration. Who else would he have to kill to escape her light?

Would it have to be _her_ after all? Why, why, why? He had passed the test, hadn't he? He had killed his own damned father, stunted any trace of Ben Solo into the dust and thrown him down an endless pit along with his father. How much more did he have to lose, to _destroy_ , in order to be free of the fire in his heart?

Was it only her death that would cement his place in the world when his own choices couldn’t seem to do the job as long as she was still around?

Rey, always Rey. Always beaming and glowing and tucking at him relentlessly? He started his pursuit.

***

The former storm trooper was no match for him. But he had gotten in some decent hits. Kylo pounded against the deep flesh wound Chewbacca left him with, just above his left hip, and it burned and throbbed, the pain keeping him tethered to the Dark Side of the force. Snow mixed with ash as he fought the man in the woods outside of Star Killer base. In a rush of anger, too quick for the other to anticipate, he threw the stupid traitor into a tree and hoped he’d broken his back.

And like a clock, reliable as she had been when they were children together, Rey found him again, found her power and eventually called the blue lightsaber to her. A lightsaber that could have answered to both of them, since both their grandfathers had wielded it at a time. Still, a panicky little voice in his head was glad that she’d gotten to claim the weapon. That same voice prayed that Rey knew how to fight him with it.

They charged at each other with wild fury and he eventually drove her to an abyss that had opened up, while the Star Killer, heavily under attack by the Resistance, started to disintegrate beneath them. He could push her now and it would all be over. The light would die and he’d be rid of it forever. She called him a monster.  
“You need a teacher,” he bellowed at her, over the buzzing of lasers, just inches from her face, drenched in purple light from their lightsabers - his red and hers blue - clashed together above their heads, “I can teach you the ways of the Force.”  
_That’s the only way I don’t have to kill you_ , he thought desperately, _please don’t make me have to kill you_.  
And then she closed her eyes. And he could feel her tap into her side of the Force and suddenly, she had wriggled from her position and got ground on him and the tables were turned.

They danced, fighting to the bone until she caught his hand and he caught hers, their chests were touching while both pushed and pulled at arms and hands and she drove his arm and weapon to the ground so the laser burned the snow with a hiss. Finally, she got the better of him.

***

He felt her after that. Constantly. Felt her training, felt her when their paths eventually crossed again and again and while her power grew, he grew nervous that she would find out who she was, who _he_ was and who'd they been together. Kylo wondered if his mother would be the one to tell her, wondered if Luke would, but each time he saw her, she was in the dark as ever.

It was just their connection that rattled her when the dreams of the tall, dark and faceless stranger returned to her with vigour - only that he had a face now. Sometimes Kylo Ren was weak and overpowered by earthly, shameful hunger and he creeped into those dreams. He learned the way her body moved and how it felt when she was seeking and nearing release. He'd learned how her lips tasted, got to know the woman she had become and ever so often let himself fall into her light. When that always startled little gasp escaped her mouth, falling open in a silent 'oh' with him buried inside her body and soul, he would feel like a moth, his edges singed by her fire and his heart burning with more conflict than he’d ever known, even as a boy. Sometimes he wanted nothing more than to catch that fire and turn into dust in her ever-fleeting hands.

Over time, he began to think that she knew. That she must’ve known he wasn’t just a recurring fever dream she could just conjure up when she felt hollow. And then, there were battles where they faced off with each other and neither of them found it in them to kill the other. He looked for it in her, repeatedly, wanted to find how much she hated him but she _didn’t_. Rey was just sad. Sad for the man she could see beneath the cloak and the mask and the rage and hate. She appealed to him sometimes, throwing memories of twisted sheets and musky air at him but he couldn’t follow where she wanted to lead him. He had been one with the darkness so long, he didn't know how to escape it anymore.  
_One day_ , he thought, _at the end of all things, I will tell you who you are - if someone else doesn’t do it first._

***

The moment she knows, he stands opposite her in yet another face-off and her even features contort into every possible direction as the memories come back to her.

The first time she saw him, only a child, the months of being a lovestruck little girl, yearning and pining for him and then years and years of dreaming of him, unaware that it was _he_ who was haunting her nights and shaping and feeding her desires. 

Then the fresh memories of what he had become mingle themselves into the mess - along with the emotions he supplies her with willingly, letting them cross the distance - his own longing, his own twisted obsession, his broken, beaten, shrivelled heart that is all hers and all stifled light in his chest. He is a creature of darkness but his light is, and has always been, hers.

He is a sinner of the greatest scale but she holds his innocence in her raging head, she holds his heart. She can feel it, that treacherous heart, as if it was a tangible thing, more winding little creature than metaphor.

And then her voice travels over to him, a broken little sound, almost transparent, like the tears that fall from her eyes.  
“Ben,” she mutters, her voice laced with grief, regret, compassion and something else entirely. It splits him in two.

Kylo shatters beneath the weight of all she knows now, all _he_ knows now and how there is a galaxy between them and two sides of the same Force pulling them in opposing directions.

“Rey,” he replies and wills it to reach her for what it really is, an _I Love You_ , and _I’m So Sorry_.

That’s when the shot from Poe’s blaster hits him between the shoulder blades unforeseen. He feels a sharp pain, cries out and topples over and everything fades to an endless pitch black. The last thing he sees is Rey's wide-eyed panic as she starts to run to him with a choked-up scream.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a direct continuation of the previous scene.  
> I will warn you, this turns sickly sweet and fluffy at the end, I don't even know how that happened but it did. 
> 
> (It does have killer smut, so maybe that will make it worth it. Okay, I'm gonna update the rating now.)
> 
> Oh..and, it's 5AM where I live right now and I have not edited this chapter and I will only do so tomorrow..so there will be many many mistakes. If you like, you can read it now and check back in later for the director's cut of sorts or, wait, or just take it as the sleep-deprived monster that it is.
> 
> Thank you for all your comments and kudos, they give me life and nurture <3 I hope you like this :)

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Kylo Ren is dangling on the edge of eternal darkness when he feels a pair of small hands push on what he supposes is his body and it drags his mind back, while his limbs are immobile. He senses footsteps, running and then he hears muffled voices arguing. There is Rey, animated and he feels her pressure on him and a sentence of her rambling gets through to him, wherever he is at the moment.

  
“We’re not leaving him here,” she says, unwavering in her conviction.  
Someone else talks and he thinks it’s the stormtrooper who dubbed himself Finn. Kylo does not understand his words but they sound broken, crushed and then it all disappears again.  
Kylo drops in and out of consciousness, everything hurts and burns and he can feel his body disintegrating and coming together again.  
He can’t open his eyes but there is a wildfire behind them. It’s all Rey and him, entangled in their lives, everything about them unfolding and as he recovers, slowly, the images become sharper and the memories more intense. He is aware of nothing other than her. She is somewhere near and he drinks in her light, he gets so lost in him, he misses the looming presence of something stronger and dar darker than himself.

  
It is only when he thinks he might be able to open his eyes again, that he notices and it’s much too late. He jolts awake, up but is met with resistance. It’s nothing, everything is nothing compared to the terror gripping all he is.  
Snoke grins in his minds eye and he can hear his voice, taunting and sure of all their fates; “So this is how it is. Oh, you silly boy, you will wish that she’d let you die tonight.”  
He fights for his earthly form to respond to his frantic mind, forces his eyes to open and he screams for her with all the might he can muster.  
She is just a scheme in his blurry view but she is there and he manages to say what he needs to before his lights go out again.  
“He knows,” he pants, barely holding on to reality, “He’s coming for you.”

***

When he wakes, he wakes from blackness. He is lying on something solid, a thin mattress and he is restrained by his wrists and ankles. Still, his body feels so heavy, he doubts he would be able to get up anyway. His chest burns with every breath and he knows he must be shattered. Still, he is alive and his eyes open and bring a cave-y ceiling into focus and then, sure enough, tanned skin and frizzy hair framing a beautifully distraught face.  
Despite himself and through all the pain, he grimaces something that should be a smile but it tucks at all the wrong strands in him and he winces in pain. She puts a shaky hand on his shoulder and shushes him, gently. And gives him a moment to recover.  
“What have you done?” Her voice is home and warmth and he doesn’t care anymore. He is too weak to fight it, too weak to push her away and she knows anyway. Everyone knows. And it might as well light the universe aflame.

  
“Rey,” is all he says, battered and bruised and her name is a remedy.  
“Why would you do that,” she asks again, “Any of it?”  
“I was just..,” but he can’t finish the thought, it’s not solid, it’s not in his grasp. He knows nothing.  
He reaches out to her, to her mind and finds her reluctant to his attempts. She is a hurricane of emotions and raw to the core.  
“How did this happen to you?” Her questions are never ending, “I was right there, why did you shut me out?”

She is a child in her head and he is one too, she puzzles their last year together, tries to find signs and clues to his entanglement with the Dark Side in her memory but finds none.  
“Why did you push me away?”  
Something spiteful rears its head in him, as he gives her his memory and his side of the story, with words, too.  
“You pushed me away,” he says, trying to raise a voice that has no substance, “You were never the same, you never let me come back to you, for two years I waited for you to be normal with me, to treat me like…me again. And you never did.”  
Her answer comes quick and loaded, from a heavy lips: “Because I still loved you. Couldn’t you see that? I loved you like a fool and you didn’t want me too. I had to hide it, what was I supposed to do? I was just a kid, Ben!”

And there it his. His name. Spoken from a mouth in a way this mouth had used to say it so many times. And he thinks that he did know. But still, without her light, keeping his darkness in check, Snoke had it all to easy, slipping and creeping into his mind, installing delusions of grandeur.  
“Oh no, don’t you dare put this on me,” she snaps and he notices only then that she has been in his head this whole time, “I didn’t make you succumb to the dark side, I never abandoned you. I was still there. You made that choice.”  
She bangs her first in his chest and he can’t breathe for a second.  
“You left me in the desert,” she insists, words thick with a threatening sob, “If anyone abandoned anyone, you did me. You left me with nothing but shadows, a tiny girl on an evil planet. I was all alone. For nine years.”

She slams the memories at him and each and everyone is an accusation. Rey wandering through the dunes on tired, tiny feet, sand burning the soles until she bleeds. Scrap dealers, half-raising, half-exploiting her. A crumbled AT-AT she makes into a home and a growing girl who yearns and yearns and yearns for a family that is gone. Rey alone in starless nights, wishing for the shadow of a memory, the idea of a friend, she know knows to be an echo of him. Her pain stings him far more than his mere flesh’s wound could and he is infinitely sorry. Even more so, since there is absolutely nothing he can do now to change any of it.

She is crying, quietly, almost inaudible but he can feel the tears run down her cheeks as it they were his own. Or maybe they are, maybe he is crying, too. He can’t tell. He can’t turn his head to look at her, his head too heavy and she has removed herself from his frame of sight. He is not sure he can bare the sight of her but he needs to, even if it kills him.

He thinks her name, beckoning, pleading with her and there she is, hovering over him. All puffy eyes and thin lips. In her head, she went on to replaying more of the horrible things she’s seen him do. The fights with her alone are enough to fill books and worse than the fights are only the nights he’d barged into her dreams. He feels her self-loathing and shame every time he left her and he tries to keep his own memories of wicked satisfaction and petty triumph over each of their encounters to himself but she has seen it all already. She snickers and jolts him with electric force, meant to singe and burn and punish. The only defines he has are the follow-ups to his memories, the way he had eventually lost himself in the tenderness she coaxed out in him, how he fell in love with her hopelessly and tried to lie to himself pathetically, unable to realise that it only made him spiral faster and further out of control. All the while straining to keep Snoke out of that turmoiled part of his brain. He had failed her in this now, as he had failed her in anything.

She relents at that, if only ever so slightly. She is running hypothesis through her mind and voices one of them. It’s one of the past.  
“You could have taken me with you,” she mutters.  
“You would’ve never turned to the Dark Side,” he says and she already knows, “He would’ve made me kill you. Or worse, he would’ve made me watch him kill you. He’s trying to show me right now how he would do it, how he plans on doing it when he finds you.”  
Rey’s handle on the Force shifts and he feels her light cover him like a bright blanket and Snoke is temporarily banned from his thoughts. He marvels at her strength.  
“You can do that?”

“I’ve been training, you know,” she says and it’s almost a quip.  
“I know,” he hurries to say, his voice slowly gaining more footing in his throat, “but you never did that with me. Never all the way. Even back then, I could always feel something.”  
“It’s different with you,” she says, “I can’t keep you out all the way, Gods know I’ve tried.”  
She remembers nights not too far away when he visited her in her sleep, remembers how on many instances, he couldn’t grab hold of her for long, nights when she did not let him in and she nods weakly at his wordless question.  
“That’s when I tried really hard,” she admits and this time the grimace he can muster comes closer to a smile. She huffs out a sweet, seemingly impossible little laugh and moves her hand from his shoulder to his cheek. Her eyes sing to him, even though he can sense how she’d rather they didn’t. They are on unchartered territory, not sure what to make of each other now that everything has shifted so thoroughly.  
“Rest now,” she says and much too soon, her hand is retrieved from his face and leaves cold in her wake. But he does not feel it for long. For the first time in ages, he falls into a dreamless sleep. He only feels a warm glow of light. The protective blanket she has wrapped his mind in stays on him the whole time.

***

It’s another day. His body feels slightly better and it leaves his brain with enough capacity to contemplate his situation. Snoke is burning around the edges of his mind but he is stronger now, willing and able to keep him at bay as best as he can. Still, he can feel him closing in. It won’t be long until he finds their hide-out. The only thing that helps is that Kylo or Ben, or whoever he is now, has no idea where he is either.  
He only knows that there are a couple minds in tune with the force around him. He knows that his mother is there, feeling her energy buzzing and he also feels that his uncle is close. He must be with the Resistance. And so far, whatever Rey had told them, kept them from removing his head from his body.  
Rey doesn’t come for hours into the day but he reaches for her. She keeps him at bay and he does not understand why. He gets restless and demanding, up to the point where she thinks I'm into a corner and reprimands him.  
“Not now,” she says, as if she was standing right beside him, “I can’t.”  
“I need,” he starts thinking and then blushes, if his brain could convey such a thing to her, “I need to…attend to some…human business and I’m strapped to the bed.”  
“Oh,” her amusement is the best thing he’s felt in years, “wait, I’ll send someone.”

A short time later, he can feel a presence making it’s way to him and he is immediately alarmed. He calls out to Rey again and this time she is quicker to answer.  
“I don’t want to see her,” he pleads, “I’m not sure that I can.”  
“Well, you’ll have to.”  
He senses something odd there. In the way she thinks about his mother.  
“You are angry with her,” he states, puzzled.  
“She didn’t tell me who I was, she’s known the entire time and she didn’t tell me,” her contempt is that of a teenager.  
“He just wanted to protect you,” he says because he knows it’s true, “Luke as well.”  
“Well, I’d just like for people to stop making decisions for me,” it’s poignant enough for him to understand that she meant him more than anyone else, “Anyway, you deal with it now, she’ll be with you shortly.”

And then his mother opens the door to his cell. She looks older than when he’s seen her last. And tired. She carries a pot and he would be hysterical if it wasn’t all so absurd. When she walks to him to undo his shackles, he feels her gaze on him. Feels her study his features, every inch of his face and when their eyes meet, he can’t stand it for more than a moment. He has taken everything from her. What a great reward for bringing him into this world. He sits up, because nature does call and he doesn't want to piss himself, in front of his mother no less.

She retreats into a corner and then he realises that she has no intention of leaving him alone to do this. He hesitates while his bladder protests harshly.  
“Oh come on,” her voice carries and he is catapulted back into a far easier time, lightyears away, “I’ve potty trained you, nothing I haven’t seen before.”  
Rattled by the sheer bizarreness of the situation, he shoves the pot to the far end of the wall with his foot and turns his back to her. He unbuckles his pants, not his own, as he notes, just nondescript grey linen trousers, matching the shirt he wars, which is several shades darker. It takes a while until he can actually release his bladder and for a second he forgets that his mother in the room.

He finishes and puts everything back where it belongs and then scuffles back to his bed, sitting down and studying his bare feet. He does not dare to even try and touch her mind. Her twisting energy is all he can take for the moment. She stares at him still. And then, after an eternity, asks.  
“Where do you stand?” It’s a simple enough question but he truly has no idea. He senses hope in her and despair and something sharp and iron that is all the way connected to his father and what he did to him. What he took from her.  
“I…,” he begins but has to think words into existence first, “I want to protect her. And you.”  
Now, he looks up.

His mother is a statue, her face betraying no emotion, while her eyes contain a swirling universe. After an endless moment, she nods. And then she collects the pot from the floor and leaves. He wants to cry when the door closes and the desire to reach out to Rey again is overwhelming but he decides that he has to handle this alone.

***

After a long day of solitude, he is moved by unflinching and non-talking men of the Resistance to another cell. It has a cot with a thin mattress, a blanket and his very own toilet. Best of all, he loses the bounds to hand and feet at the door. He gets food for the first time and it hurts like hell to swallow but brings some life back into him. When he deems it late enough to go to sleep, he lays down on the cot and stares at the ceiling. Looking for Rey is second nature at this point and he finds her quickly, her glow clear and defined.

She lets him in this time, lets him see her own ceiling, not unlike his own and she offers her blanket of white peace and he takes it willingly. He sends back some of his longing back in turn. Her response is warm content. It’s not enough. With sharpened senses, free to roam and focus under her protection, he fiercely imagines his hand on her face, two fingers gingerly ghosting over her jaw, then change direction and move to her lips. They fall open, he feels the movement and hears the stifled gasp resounding in her skull. He thinks of the many times he has done this to her, waking and dreaming, and his body quickly responds in its usual way, turning hot and cold and drawing blood to his centre.

It stings, because his body is still broken and then she protests.  
“Rest,” she says.  
“No,” he replies.  
“Ben,” her tone is strict but he can feel a heat coiling up in her belly that betrays her.  
“Come to me,” he bids, throwing in a very vivid memory of a heated kiss shared in an almost forgotten dream for good measure.  
“You’re still in recovery,” she argues while the kiss plays back in her head, fused with her own responses to the image in an infinite feedback loop. He can feel her breath hitch in her throat.  
“I’m tired of doing this in my head,” he says, “I’ll be fine.”  
She is still not convinced.  
“Please,” he all but begs her and then she switches him out of her brain and he sits up with the shock of separation, wide awake again. Her blanket is still there, like a dome over him but her thoughts are gone. There’s just remnants of her emotions. They’re bright things, yellow and red, tinged with affection and want and he moves to the door to find it locked. Of course. He is still a prisoner after all.  
He paces through the room, every step stinging in his diaphragm, the erection he’d worked himself up to, straining uncomfortably against his pants. He is pushing through the Force to find her but can’t get a grip.  
He is ready to scream when he hears footsteps approaching and then he feels her glow closer and closer yet. His door rattles open and there she is. In the flesh. Small and only dressed in thin bed clothes, sandy linen pants and a white top. She closes the door behind her and looks at him like she’s seen a ghost.

“What?” He asks her, heart hammering in his chest. He is suddenly nervous like a schoolboy, overly aware of his marked, broken face, and forgets to purge through her head, because he is so busy calming his own.  
“I just,” she starts, “We’ve never…done this before.” 

“No,” he says, “not in the flesh.”  
She lingers by the door and her uncertainty waves across the room to him when she studies his shirt and knows there are thick bandages over his chest and shoulders where Poe’s blaster shot had nearly killed him.  
“I’m still not sure that this is a good idea,” she says and he can feel her dry mouth.  
“I am,” he insists, a wicked smile crossing his face, feeling her overpowering desire for him, “You just have to be a little careful with me.”

He takes a tentative step toward her and then another until he towers over her short frame. The only times he’s been this close to her in reality was when they were fighting, lightsabers clashing and sizzling about their heads. But they’ve put their armour down now. She looks up at him, brow furrowed into a frown.  
“Is it weird that I think this is weird?” She asks.  
“No,” he breathes, all nerves and exaltation “It _is_ weird.”  
Rey lets out a nervous, precious chuckle and puts her right hand on his right upper arm. The touch burns, more pleasant than the burns that follow his sharp intake of breath. She grows rigid again, unwilling to cause him pain. He shakes his head.  
“Rey, let’s just operate under the given that everything I do hurts, but that _I don’t care_ ,” he says under his breath, “Can you do that? Just ignore the pain and trust me that I can handle it.”  
The hand on his arm relaxes a bit and she nods.

“Okay,” he whispers and brings a straining hand up to cup her face.  
She turns her face into his palm and kisses it, ever so softly. He takes a step closer, so their bodies touch lightly as a feather’s brush and his other hand takes a twin position on the other side of her face. Her eyes glimmer, along with her aura and he lets it sink in for a second, that she is really here and that he is really alive to live this moment.  
When he leans in, he takes his time and she remains still until all distance is breeched and her lips open to meet his. They are soft and warm and everything in him springs into the light at the touch. It is more powerful than anything he has ever felt and the Force he’s feeling in the static buzz around them pales in comparison.  
She lets him go slow, savouring the taste of her mouth, running with whatever his lips do and simply wraps her left arm around his torso. Pain is mixed in with the pleasure but it hardly reaches him. He thinks he might as well be in flight.  
Testing, and tasting, he flicks his tongue against her lips and she gives him more space, waits and meets him halfway. There’s no air between them for a while as mouths are running and hearts are thundering underneath broken and healed, and not quite healed rips.  
His cock is stirring but he is pushing the blind desire further back into his mind, this is not about getting a quick fix. This is about _everything_.

His hands wander from her face, across both sides of her body, hold her waist, squeeze flesh between his fingers and draw her in closer to him. A delicious, illicit moan escapes her and he laughs a throaty, hungry laugh into her mouth. She pushes herself up to her tiptoes and his fingers close around the hem of her top. She breaks the kiss then, and he has to struggle to open his eyes again. He is so busy handling the kissing by sense of taste and sound and feel alone, he must brace himself to see her face again. Face reddened, she has her arms raised above her head, expecting him to free her of the garment and he does. Until he can’t because he can’t lift his arms that far. She jumps in, quickly and then also, admittedly a little clumsy, frees him of his own shirt. She is a marvel, small, firm breasts with pebbled nipples that just scream to be explored.

She gasps when she sees his torso and it’s not of pleasure. He is black and blue, covered in scars, many of them she knows to have been inflicted by her. She traces them with her fingers and leaves his fresh bandages untouched. His skin flares up wherever she touches him and his chest constricts painfully as he has to draw deeper breaths, the oxygen in his system feeling painfully insufficient.

She is watching him as her hands travel further down and with vigour, Ben’s erection is back on the forefront of his mind. She is so close now, her hands warm and curious and he yearns for her touch, wants to buckle his hips upward, to meet her but he restrains himself, opts to wait. And she finds him eventually, with trying and somewhat hesitant hands. One finally comes to rest on his hip bone and the other - _Gods_ \- he other closes gingerly around his cock.  
The breath that halts in his lungs feels like it’s ripping his chest open, not just because his wound stings with a searing pain. She hisses and retracts her hand because she felt the pain, too.  
“No,” he winces, pathetically, “don’t stop, I’m sorry, I’ll keep the pain away. Please don’t stop.”  
Rey sighs and rises to her tiptoes again and stifles his moan with a kiss while her hand closes around his hard length again and she starts rubbing it through the fabric.  
He curses into her mouth and catches her lip in a bite. Her response is instant and making it hard to keep his self control intact. Because she squeezes his dick in her hand and groans, deep and throaty.

This is the only real, tangible thing he has ever felt. Everything before was just smoke and mirrors, he is sure.  
He breaks their connection long enough to whisper something, as soon as he can remember how speech works.  
“I want to kiss you,” he breathes.  
“I thought you _were_ kissing me,” she whispers back.  
“No,” he says and snakes a hand beneath the waistband of her pants, “I want to kiss you there.”  
Her heart misses a beat and she nods a curious but nervous consent before Ben sinks to his knees. Her hand falls on his shoulder then, searching for purchase as he helps her out of the linen.

Her scent is thick and amazing and his cock twitches almost uncomfortably, upward, hungry and restless and the curly hair on her mound looks damp with her own excitement. He gets closer to her, and twists his head, using lithe fingers to open her up for him. She shudders from head to toe and back as he puts his mouth on rosy and wet, plumb flesh. He explores her, like an aimless wanderer and finds the tiny peak above her entrance that makes her other hand fall to his head on scratch his scalp, grabbing a fistful of his black hair. He feels her sensation being played back to him and it’s everything. She withers as he continues to lick and nibble and suck and he feels heat coil up in the pit of her stomach as her legs start to wobble and she leans heavier on his head and shoulder.

She mutters his name, his real name, and he finds himself close to the edge too. He kisses her, on and on and feels her rising up, tension building and the hairs on her body start to stand up. He has to use his free hand to wrap his cock in and grip it tight, willing it to still, to halt, to keep from coming before he had even started going and while he does, she shatters around his mouth. There it is, her ever-startled gasp. It’s far sweeter in person than it was as a resounding echo in her head.  
She can’t stand for a while and holds onto him as he rises, bones cracking and rips burning with the effort. He truly doesn’t care, he just takes in her flushed cheeks in the twilight of his cell and waits for her to open her eyes and catch her breath. When she does, he looks for some sort of verdict in her face that she doesn’t give. So he asks.  
“Did you like that?” It’s not a cocky question, it’s sincere because through it all, he is still rather new to this. Entirely new, if you didn’t count their minds explorations and the rough prostitute all those years ago that took his virginity. He banishes her as quickly as she has come to mind and resolves to forget her entirely.  
Rey’s chest is still heaving and she digs three fingers into the arm that's steadying her.  
“I liked that,” she answers him, “I want more.”

It’s music to his ears and slowly, when she has found her sure footing again, he pulls her to his cot. He is trying to navigate her and she lets him, but he is uncertain. His body hurts. Despite his earlier resolve, he dreads even lying down. She feels his discomfort and he is afraid that she will end this folly then and there and tell him to heal first but he has underestimated the fire burning inside her yet again.  
“Just lie down,” she says, “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”  
Now it’s her steadying him as she removes his pants and has him sit down, his torso in searing pain in at least twelve different places and he winces. His erection is pointing into the air, only slightly affected by the blinding pain in its fellow body parts. Rey shoves their discarded clothes together in a messy pile with her feet, graceful in her complete nakedness and he feels gangly and unshapely in comparison, his skin scarred and pale from years of being clad in black from head to toe. She feels his shame and joins him at the bed, grabbing his legs and hoisting them onto the mattress so he lays flat on his back.

“You’re beautiful,” she says, voice low and sincere, “pale, scarred skin, long limbs and all.”  
She is pure light again, as she approaches him, and climbs on top of him until she sits on her shins and hovers over him, heat radiating between their bodies. He glances up at her and smiles. The Dark Side has no power over him when this is a view he can have and keep and freeze in his memory. Rey is blazing. And she smiles back, hands closing around his elbows.  
“Are you ready?” She asks him and he nods, unable to speak, “I’ll try not to hurt you too bad.”

Then, slowly, she lowers herself onto him and in an explosion of light and pain and ecstasy. He slips into her as if they were built for just this purpose and his eyes bulge, ready to burst out of his skull by sheer force of releasing pressure.  
She hums on top of him, all of her hums and when she starts moving, rocking her body up and down and grinding into his hips, riding on his cock, he thinks he can touch and comprehend every bit of the universe.

  
He feels her own pleasure, played back to him, feels how she feels being filled and stretched by him, feels the wholeness she has craved for so long and finds in it, in this, the Light Side that has evaded him for so long. It whitens out the corners of his mind and brings relentless illumination to even the bleakest edges of his brain.  
And she is sitting on him, fucking him and _loving_ him with abandon and adoration. And he is Ben, the way he was always supposed to be, and her moans and groans and gasps chase all his shadows away. He is laid bare for her, raw and vulnerable and as his vision starts to blur with wide specs, she takes him in, takes him inside of her, just as he is. Again and again and again.

It feels as if she is crawling into his chest, into his very soul and kisses and loves every part he was sure she must hate. But in her endless compassion, her infinite grace, of course, she hates none of it. He doesn’t know why he is even the slightest bit surprised. And then he doesn’t know anything anymore as his mind blanks out.

Her walls start tumbling and spasming around him and he pulls her down to him, onto a burning chest and catches her lips in a consuming, breathless kiss. Attached to her everywhere, he comes apart at the seams. Falling and melting away under her, _in_ her and he’s a newborn star, young and fresh, born of a supernova. She rides out the waves of her own release and kisses him with little, bird-like pecks and when she is done, he has forgotten who he is.

Minutes later, or maybe years, she climbs down from him and he shuffles, hissing in pain, so she has some space beside him. She plucks the blanket that has fallen down from the floor and drapes it over her beating, beaming bodies. She wedges into the space between his side and the wall and places a hand on his wound, which, Ben is pretty sure, has opened up again.

It sizzles under her touch, but it isn’t as unpleasant as one would think.  
“What are you doing?” He asks into her hair, which smells of sweat and sex and marvels.  
“I’m trying something,” she says, “Something Master Luke tried to teach me.”  
And he can feel her pull at the Force, it flows through her with ease, all of her channels open and focused on the light, her defences thick as castle walls and her mind calm and balanced and then it registers, what she’s trying to do.  
She is using it to heal him, and he knows it’s one of the greatest and most challenging of abilities to attain as a Jedi _or_ a Sith. But, sure enough, she manages it and it seems almost effortless in her connection to the light.

The pain fades, slowly at first but then notably and he laughs in amazement, in worship of her power and her love and when she stops, she looks tired but peaceful and he feels just that. The pain in his chest already a distant memory. She splays out across his body then, legs wrapping around his and head resting on his heart.  
She listens to it beat, a bit too fast but whole and intact and, if he believed her dazed and drunk thoughts, a few sizes bigger. If anything, it is full of her.

He would without a doubt wake up to the great regret of what such a fundamental change to the wiring of his being would have, but for now, he lets himself get lulled into her sweet exhaustion and he let his fingers run up and down her bare back until they both drift off to sleep. They dream together, and dream of sleeping next to each other, minds in sync and at peace.

All his life he had been looking for something he would be able to stand for, to fight for, so he wouldn’t fall for nothing. And none of his trials and tribulations ever seemed right. But this does. Finally, finally his existence makes sense. It’s _her_. It’s always been her.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, I'll say it again, if you wanna weigh into this theory, do so in the comments, I'd love to hear from you :)  
> Thank you for reading <3


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